Dancing on Ice sensations Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean are set to give their final live TV performance in the show’s forthcoming series, stating that they are ‘too old’ to skate professionally. The iconic British duo has earned 16 gold medals across various championships including World, European and British Figure Skating Championships and retired from competitive skating in 1998.
The pair captured national hearts with their gold-medal-winning performance at the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics, which was immortalised by their Bolero routine, drawing a staggering 24 million viewers – one of the UK’s most viewed sporting moments. They have been enchanting audiences since 2006 on Dancing on Ice but now, Torvill and Dean have decided it’s time to permanently park their skates post this season.
“This will be our last live skate – here on Dancing on Ice,” Christopher declared. He further revealed that their upcoming tour will also mark the end of their performing careers: “We’re doing our last tour this year as well so once we’ve finished our last skate on tour, we won’t be performing again. There are lots of endings.”
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At 66 years young, Christopher expressed readiness to conclude the longstanding skating journey shared with 67 year old Jayne: “We’ve been doing it a long time and people our age shouldn’t be doing it now,” he remarked.
“So we’re just happy that we can still do it.” Although they won’t be performing on the ice anymore, the duo will still continue to serve as judges alongside Diversity’s Ashley Banjo and former Strictly Come Dancing star Oti Mabuse.
Jayne shared, “Dancing on Ice feels like our baby because we were approached by ITV in the early days and we came up with this format together of how it might work,” adding that their collaboration helped shape the show since they knew about skating and ITV knew television.
“We didn’t know much about TV but they didn’t know how skating works so together, the programme developed and it’s great that we were there from the beginning.”
Christopher revealed his post-skating plans include a surprising new pastime: “I’ve taken up beekeeping. It sounds like a good thing to do.”
Dancing on Ice starts tonight on ITV1 at 6.30pm.